The filming for “The Marvelous Failures of Stephen Priest” starts this week. As usual, I will forgo shaving my face until production wraps. This, while having neither moral, ethical, spiritual or other-al meaning, kinda gives the impression that I do not care about anything else while I am making a movie.<\/p>\n

Far from it. I do. I just have trouble showing it. So let me know if I ignore you this week. (….get it? Hah.)<\/p>\n

Anyways, this week, as we boldly travel to downtown Orlando’s Lake Eola to film for almost the entire day of Saturday, we have a fantastic…nay, a MARVELOUS opportunity to meet people who spend good portions of time there (i.e. Orlando’s homeless). Before, I’ve rarely spoken to anyone, either answering questions with short, rather curt responses, or busily ignoring their existence entirely. How very Christian-like. This was brought to my attention in a blunt way by my brother, who mentioned that a request for money is more than a simple offering (even if it does not benefit the church). It is an opening…a crack in a normally sturdy shell…to walk up to someone and speak to them of holy and righteous things. God knows, someone without a home or regular source of income could use someone who actually cares than someone who chucks a few dollars at them as they pass.<\/p>\n

To take it a step further: My purpose for this film, and any films proceeding it, is to invoke <\/em>emotional responses with the purpose of self-questioning, and to provoke <\/em>a search for answers if none should be handily available. In other words, as a Christian, I wish to present a different perspective on life, so people can ask themselves serious questions, and hopefully be motivated to search for the answers in the form of the Gospel. So passing by the immediate need in a park full of needy, in order to provide questions to figurative people I cannot see in the future, would hardly be appropriate.<\/p>\n

So pray for us. Pray that we might go with a plan, and be delightfully surprised by the outcome. Pray that our hearts are soft and moldable and full of a passion for God, and that the hearts of the people we will undoubtedly converse with are ripe and ready to receive. And pray that, while “Stephen Priest” may go on to win in some film contest somewhere, his effects may spread beyond anything we could possibly imagine, and become something truly marvelous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The filming for “The Marvelous Failures of Stephen Priest” starts this week. As usual, I will forgo shaving my face until production wraps. This, while having neither moral, ethical, spiritual or other-al meaning, kinda gives the impression that I do not care about anything else while I am making a movie. Far from it. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[908],"tags":[151,295,313,318,361,364,466,512,553,597,792],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-christianity","tag-failures","tag-filming","tag-florida","tag-god","tag-gospel","tag-lake-eola","tag-marvelous","tag-movie","tag-orlando","tag-stephen-priest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n